Tokyo Magnitude 8.0

Mirai Onosawa - Tokyo Magnitude 8.0
Natsuko Takahashi / studio Bones / Kinema Citrus.

Original title: Tokyo Magunichudo 8.0
Characters: Mirai Onosawa, Yuki Onosawa, Mari Kusanabe, Seiji Onosawa, Masami Onosawa, Christel Takigawa
Author: Natsuko Takahashi
Production: Bones, Kinema Citrus
Regia: Masaki Tachibana

Country: Japan
Year: 9 July 2009
Broadcast in Italy: August 22, 2011
Gender: Dramatic
Episodes: 11
Duration: 24 minutes
Recommended age: Teenagers aged 13 to 19

The animated series Tokyo Magnitude 8.0 is a splendid anime written by Natsuko Takahashi and created by the studios Bones and Kinema Citrus, behind the skilful direction of Masaki Tachibana for a total of 11 episodes. First aired in 2009 on Fuji TV, the anime Tokyo Magnitude 8.0 impressively anticipates the catastrophic earthquake that struck Japan on March 11 two years later. Paradoxically, the authors' intentions were precisely to show what could have happened in the event of an earthquake in the most likely way possible, based on a statistical forecast according to which the country, in 2009, would have had a 70% probability of suffering a similar cataclysm within thirty years. The series was so realistic that it had to be suspended following the earthquake, so as not to hurt the sensitivity of the victims' families. It arrived in Italy thanks to Yamato Video and was broadcast from 22 August 2011 on Rai 4, and later on the channels Manga e Rai gulp. The anime was awarded the Excellence Prize in 2009 at Japan's Media Art Festival.

Tokyo, 15.46 pm: an earthquake measuring 8.0 on the Richter scale, with its epicenter in the northern area of Tokyo Bay about 25 km deep below sea level, struck the center of the Kanto region, causing historic buildings to collapse and reap several victims.
Onosawa Mirai is a 13-year-old student, dissatisfied with her monotonous existence and bored with life. It is she who introduces us to the events, declaring that before it she easily thought that it would be fine for her, if her whole life had gone “to hell”. Let's take a time jump back.
It is the day of the withdrawal of the report cards at the Rikka girls' school and Mirai's grades have dropped, moreover the girl has two parents who work and discuss non-stop and a younger brother, Yuuki, who is an incurable optimist. The day after her mother's birthday, after yet another quarrel between her parents, Yuuki asks her mother for permission to go to a robot exhibition to be held in Odaiba, an artificial island in Tokyo Bay, and, since the mother he must work, it will be up to Mirai to accompany him. The girl is not happy at the idea of having to nurse her little brother once again, but she has no other choice also because Yuuki is convinced he wants to go there, because the place reminds him of the last time the family went on a trip , she had been really happy. After visiting the exhibit and buying a birthday present for his mom, Yuuki has to go to the toilet and his sister waits for him outside, continuing to scribble on his cellphone.

But just as she is sending her friends a message in which she wrote that it would be okay if the world fell apart, the fury of a very strong earthquake explodes. Once the shock is over, Mirai, who managed to save herself by clinging to a railing, enters the crumbling building to look for Yuuki but cannot find him. Suddenly a new shock causes a ceiling to collapse and Mirai is saved by a woman, Kusakabe Mari, who decides to help her find Yuuki. Remembering that she had asked her little brother to buy her a drink, Mirai checks a grocery store and finally finds him. Once out of the building, the three find shelter on a staircase with many other people, stuck on the island like them, and discover that their respective houses are not too far, so Mari offers to accompany them. She also needs to go home as soon as possible because her mother and her four-year-old daughter Hina are waiting for her. Transport is interrupted, but the Japanese coast guard offers a ferry, the only way to reach the other side, so a crowd of people flock to the port in the hope of finding a seat on board. They manage to get on board, but a fire on the Rainbow Bridge causes the bridge to collapse and it falls into the water causing a series of waves that overwhelm the passengers of the boat that left immediately after theirs. Also in this case they manage to save themselves by a hair and, having reached the Shiba Park, they can finally refresh themselves with the basic necessities distributed by the police. Unnerved by her little brother's questions, Mirai tells him it's her fault that they're in that situation, so the baby runs away crying and heads to Tokyo Tower to try to see if their house is still standing. Mirai finds him and they make up. Shortly thereafter, however, the Tokyo Tower collapses and, to save her little sister, Yuuki throws himself on her and is hit in the head, but gets up and it seems nothing has been done. Having found Mari, the three set off for the Mirai middle school where Furuichi, an elderly volunteer, shows them a cool place where they can rest but the night is agitated due to the constant aftershocks. The next day, the three set off again towards the next stop, the place where Mari works, but from a radio announcement they learn that in the neighborhood where Mari's house is located a fire has broken out and for the first time woman, unable to get in touch with her mother even from the office, loses courage, then passes out from anemia.

Fortunately, Aya, Mari's colleague, arrives and the woman recovers but Mirai and Yuuki have gone away without saying anything about where they are headed. Aya proposes to accompany the children, so Mari can run to her daughter, but she decides that she will accompany them anyway and runs to the street to look for them. She finds them pushing a moped on foot that they borrowed to allow her to return home more quickly, but she has now made up her mind so the journey resumes. Going further on, they have the opportunity to see some rescue robots at work, already seen at the exhibition and meet a boy, Kento, a great robot enthusiast, who gives Yuuki some of his notes and drawings. Shortly thereafter Mirai manages to save Kento in danger of life. After greeting him, Yuuki suddenly faints and Mari, who immediately realizes how serious the situation is, decides to take him to the hospital. Mirai already imagines seeing him dead again, but then Mari shakes her and wakes her up: her little brother is still under the knife and after a very long wait the doctor comes out of the operating room and reports that the child is dead. After a few moments, Mirai hears herself called, wakes up and sees that Yuuki is in the hospital garden playing football with other children, so she calls him and together they go to look for Mari. Meanwhile, the woman, after having collected a certificate, listening to the television discovers that many inhabitants of her neighborhood have taken refuge in a school to escape the fire, so she runs to call Mirai and together they leave. Mari finally arrives home, but she finds it destroyed and begins to think that the mother and daughter both died in the fire, so much so that, once she arrived in the elementary school, where a mortuary has also been set up, she believes to recognize them in two corpses, but Yuuki is convinced that they are still alive and asks Mirai to help him look for them. The two find Hina in another shelter and bring her back to Mari, then discover that her mother is hospitalized but is not seriously injured. In order for Mari to take care of her mother, Mirai decides it's time for her and her brother to find their way home on their own, so they take advantage of a lorry ride to their area but first leave a note in Mari where they thank her and promise to visit her again. Mari grabs Yuuki's backpack, left on the ground, and runs out of the hospital to reach the truck but arrives late and stays on the side of the road wondering why Mirai has written to her that she and Yuuki will visit her "together". On the truck Yuuki asks Mirai what he would do if he were dead but his sister scolds him because if he dies she and the parents will suffer a lot, then asks him not to make this kind of talk anymore.

At their destination, Mirai meets a friend and discovers that her parents have taken refuge in an elementary school. Yuuki runs forward and Mirai loses track of him. After a while she meets Itsuki, her brother's best friend, who accompanies her to the shelter but her parents are not there because her mother has returned home to get some spare clothes for her father who is hospitalized for minor injuries. Before reaching her, Mirai goes in search of Yuuki with Itsuki but the child is nowhere to be found until Mirai catches a glimpse of him behind the window and the two continue to chase him while it seems that he purposely tries not to be seen by Itsuki. In Yuuki's class, in front of a drawing of her that depicts the whole family near the Rainbow Bridge, Mirai bursts into tears without knowing why and Itsuki leaves her alone, but Yuuki suddenly reappears and consoles her. When Itsuki arrives, however, Yuuki disappears again, so the two go to Itsuki's house to get the diary where the two friends had decided to note all the progress of the horse chestnut tree they planted the day before the earthquake, so that Mirai can give it to Yuuki as soon as she finds it. Itsuki enters the house despite the warning of danger of collapses posted outside, Yuuki reaches him and therefore Mirai is also forced to enter. Suddenly there is a jolt and Mirai uses her body to protect Itsuki and Yuuki from the collapsing rubble from the ceiling, but when all is over, Yuuki is gone again. It appears shortly after outside the window: it is actually her spirit because the baby really died in the hospital and since then Mirai has only imagined that she still has him by her side.

At this point Mirai doesn't want to go home but Yuuki's spirit spurs her to get back on the road. Only when he finally arrives home with his little sister, as he wished, can Yuuki leave this world. Shortly after, MIrai is reunited with her mother and father, so she can finally mourn the death of her brother with them.

A month has passed since the earthquake and Mirai is still struggling to recover from Yuuki's death, when one day, surprisingly, Mari shows up at the door of her house to return Yuuki's backpack and her cell phone to her. Among the e-mails received, she finds one sent by Yuuki with Mari's cell phone in which her little brother said he hoped soon to have a cell phone too so he could send her many emails and they could have fun even when they couldn't talk. After Mari's visit, Mirai decides to give her mother the gift that Yuuki had chosen for her and the child's drawing the night before the earthquake. Like the city of Tokyo, Mirai too slowly reconstructs her life aware of the fact that Yuuki will always watch over her.